pregnancy and birth

October 05, 2009

I had a lovely morning with Kyle, Johannah, Brody, and Stella, and managed to snap quite a few shots of my tiny six-day-old niece as well as a couple of shots of her big brother. She is such an alert and expressive baby! K&J also commented on what a difference homebirth and an older (gestationally-speaking) baby make. We found this to be true of her cousin Xander, as well - and like her, he was born in the water, at home, at 41 weeks and 5 days gestation.

December 08, 2008

Mothers
around the world share the simple, fundamental desire for a safe place
to raise their children. Safe is clean air, water and soil. Safe is
providing children with adequate housing, nutrition, health care, and
education. Safe is a community free from violence and aggression.
Despite the simplicity and universality of this desire, too many
mothers have suffered, and continue to suffer, unfathomable loss and
tragedy because one or more of these basics tenets of safety is
inferior or does not exist.At 8 p.m. EST, March 8, 2009 (International Women’s Day),
mothers of diverse backgrounds from all over the United States of
America are invited to stand together in their unique communities,
united by the love mothers everywhere have for their families, to
express compassion and solidarity for mothers world-wide, and to show
gratitude for the tireless efforts of individuals and groups who work
on behalf of mothers and their families both locally and globally.These three simple things will happen at the same time nationwide: 1. Mothers will stand together, each holding a candle.2. At 8 p.m. EST these candles will be lit and 15 minutes of contemplative silence will begin.3. At ca. 8:15 p.m. EST two verses of the song "This Little Light of Mine" will be sung. Organizers are encouraged to add to their community's event in ways that seem appropriate and relevant to their unique group.

September 12, 2008

I'm attending a baby shower for my sister-in-law Jessa this weekend, to celebrate the impending arrival of the wonderful new son that she and Sean have created. This morning while I was waking up, I was thinking about her, and about motherhood, and about a lesson I learned from a friend who is one of my biggest cheerleaders and has sometimes called upon me to be one for her.

Jen gave birth via c-section to her daughter Gwen four years ago, and shortly afterward she discovered that something she thought would happen very easily - nursing her daughter - was a much bigger challenge than she had expected, due to some difficulties in getting a good latch. This was frustrating for her, a new mother, healing from surgery, handling the hormone dump. It was very frustrating for her tiny hungry baby. It was frustrating for the people who love her, her family and friends, who were gathered around her to provide love and care to her, her new child, and her husband. They saw her struggling and they wanted to help. They wanted her struggle to end. And so they told her, "It's ok to quit. It's ok to give the baby formula. This isn't working, you don't have to do this, you don't have to feel badly."

Another woman might have felt relieved to hear these words, but Jen didn't want to quit. She really, really, really wanted to breastfeed her baby. She believed it was important. When people told her it was ok to quit, she heard "you can't do this." She wanted somebody to tell her "this sucks, it's hard, and you can do it. It's worth doing. Keep going." Nobody was telling her that. "Support" means different things to different people. It can mean giving permission to quit. It can be commiseration. It can be a kick in the pants to do something different from what you're doing. Jen's friends and family, with nothing but the best of intentions, were giving her the kind of support they thought she needed. She wanted a different kind of support.

So she called me.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I would have said to her, how I would have supported her, had she not said to me, "I'm calling you because I know you'll tell me I can do it." Whether I was really the perfect person for that is beside the point. Once I heard her say what she needed, I knew what to do for her. She had, in that moment, defined for me what "support" meant to her. In order for her to feel supported, I needed to provide support to her on her terms. So I talked to her about how she was feeling, acknowledged that the sucky stuff did indeed suck, told her about my own fumbling start at motherhood, asked her if she needed me to come visit, gave her lots of "you are doing this, you are going to look for solutions, you are bigger than this problem and you will overcome it."

She did find solutions, and she did overcome it. It took a lot of work on her part, and I know she is fiercely proud of the fact that she nursed her daughter for over a year. That happened for her because she is a smart woman who knows what she wants, knows who among her many supporters is able to provide it, and can ask directly for it.

She asked for something easier to give recently: excitement. Dan answered her call - her daughter had just hit a major milestone and she said she wanted to tell me because she knew I would genuinely share her excitement and would not one-up her with my own "oh yeah? Well, my child just published his first novel." Regardless of what our first reaction would have been, she communicated clearly what reaction she was looking for, and I really admire that about her. She knows herself and knows her resources.

I remember being impressed at her wisdom four years ago when even as an overhwhelmed new mother she was able to figure out what her own definition of "support" was, to identify a person who was likely to give it, and to tell me plainly what she wanted. I have shared that lesson with other mothers and now share it with you and Jessa. Know what you want - is it validation of how you feel? Advice? Commiseration, excitement, righteous indignation? Incitement to change, encouragement to stay the course?

Know your resources - who in your circle of loved ones - or beyond - is likely to have the skills and/or experience necessary to provide the type of support you need? One person may be great at empathizing. Another may have experienced a challenge or victory similar to your own. Another might share your personal philosophy and be able to give advice tailored to you. Another might be a professional skilled at finding solutions to your problem.

Ask directly for what you need - maximize your chances at having your needs met by not only picking your supporters wisely, but by letting them know how best to support you.

"Everywhere else in the world, thats what they do. You can go to Great Britain, France, Germany, Scandanavia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan... You can go to all the highly developed countries where they are loosing fewer women and fewer babies around the time of birth. And what do you see? You see midwives attending 70 or 80 percent of all the births. And the doctors are there to take care of the small percentage that develop a complication. That is the proven system everywhere in the world. And the United States stands alone."

"Until recently, love
was a topic for poets, novelists, philosophers... Today it is studied
from multiple scientific perspectives. With mammals in general there is
immediately after birth a short period of time which will never happen
again and which is critical in mother/baby attachment.

Until
recently, in order to give birth a woman, like all mammals, is supposed
to release a complex cocktail of love hormones. As soon as baby is born
when mother and baby are together both of them are under the effect of
a sort-of morphine, an opiate, natural morphine endorphins. We know the properties; they create states of dependency. Addiction. When mother
and baby are close to each other it is the beginning of an attachment.

But today... most women have babies without releasing this flow of hormones.

I'll
just give an example of animal experience. In general, if you disturb
the hormonal balance of a female giving birth, it is simple, the mother
does not take care of her baby. It is simple. If monkeys give birth by
cesarean section the mother is not interested in her baby. It is simple,
easy to detect on an individual level.

So you wonder, but what about our civilization? What about the future of humanity?

If most women have babies without releasing this cocktail of love hormone...Can we survive without love?"

Dan and I watched TBoBB on Sunday and the extra footage on Monday. I
had heard what an inspiring movie it is, and I believed it, but I
thought it would be preaching to the choir. Ok, so it was, to some
extent, but sometimes the choir needs to hear it again with a different
voice so that our desire to spread the word can be renewed.

Oh, how I wish that this film had been available before I gave birth to Griffin. It might have changed the way I approached his birth - I might have trusted my instincts to drive farther and pay more for a birth center birth, or, who knows, it might have freed me from my fear of homebirth sooner. If I had seen it during my pregnancy with Reese, I might have had the guts to follow my intuition and make plans for a homebirth. (I should have done this right about the time that I started hoping that my labor would go so fast that I'd birth on the interstate rather than in a hospital, because at least then nobody could tell me to do things that cause trouble during labor/birth.)

My first two births were, by most people's standards, good ones. The thing is, most people's standards reflect a really and truly messed-up view of birth that has infected our country's consciousness. When did we start thinking that it's desirable to put birthing women in foreign surroundings, with people they don't know well, who "help" them in ways that interfere with birth? Why do we fear birth so much? Why have we overlooked the transformative nature of birth - not just the event, but the process itself? Why are healthy women bearing healthy babies handing our trust not to people who see normal birth every day, but to surgeons who are trained to help with abnormal birth and who have relatively little (if any) experience with normal, healthy, unhindered birth? I'm as guilty of this as the next woman - I believed that birth belonged in hospitals. Even after learning that homebirth was equally safe, I chose an OB practice for my second birth because at the beginning of that pregnancy, homebirth freaked me out. In the end? My OBs in Charlottesville were nice guys who meant well and said all the right things, but honestly, didn't know how to attend a birth without interfering with it. Nice hospital, nice practice...for a pregnancy/birth that required a hospital birth. I should not have been there.

EVERY person I know could benefit from this film. There's a feeling among some that men can skip the birth stuff, or that women not yet ready to think about babies don't need it, or that people past their childbearing years no longer have to think about it. The thing is, what has happened to birth in our country is a travesty, and it will take ALL OF US to make it change. Even if we're done having babies, the way we think about birth affects the way we tell our stories, the type of support we give to other families, the type of things those people who hear us will pass on to other people. We can either use language that supports and encourages normal birth, or we can use language based in ignorance of normal birth, which supports a fear-based, abnormal birthing paradigm. We can build a culture that supports mothers rather than scares them. To quote Barbara Katz Rothman, "Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers ~ strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength."

February 07, 2008

Childbirth
decisions should not be dictated or influenced by what's fashionable,
trendy, or the latest cause célèbre. Despite the rosy picture painted
by home birth advocates, a seemingly normal labor and delivery can
quickly become life-threatening for both the mother and baby

OF COURSE childbirth choices should not be influenced by what's trendy. Has ACOG forgotten that the *trend* of making a normal physiological occasion into a medically managed event is only a couple of hundred years old? Where is ACOG's wagging finger when virtually every one of their members allows their clients to follow the *trend* of choosing a child's birthdate via elective induction? Or the *trend* of using labor management protocols for which there is no supporting evidence?

To insinuate that women choose homebirth because they wannabe just like Rikki Lake is insulting. Women choose homebirth because healthy mothers and babies do not need medical assistance. Period. You do not go swimming in a pool attached to the hospital *just in case* you start to drown. You do not insist that your child's basketball games are scheduled next door to St. Mary's *just in case* somebody breaks a leg. You *might* get into a life-threatening car accident at any moment of any day. Do you drive with an ambulance following five carlengths behind? Of course not.

Life is not without risks. You drive a car, you accept some risk. You
go jogging, you accept some risk. Yes, there is a small (SMALL) risk
of something tragic happening during labor and birth. That risk is
smaller than many risks that you and your children take on a daily basis without a second
thought. The appropriate time to seek medical assistance is when there is a medical need. Normal, healthy women do not have a medical need for obstetrical intervention. Obstetricians are specialists, they are surgeons. They are the people to call when there is a complication that requires an expert, a medical intervention, a surgical procedure. They are NOT necessary for attending normal, healthy births. In fact, I would argue that they are the WRONG attendants for normal, healthy births, and that hospitals are the wrong setting for normal, healthy births. Hospitals and the people who work in them are knowledgeable in complications and what to do when they happen. Thank goodness for that! However, they are NOT familiar with birth in its natural state. After all, they rarely, if ever, see a truly unhindered birth - the mere fact of a woman being out of her normal environment hinders the progression of labor and her ability to cope with it!! Hospital staff are generally unfamiliar with a birth that proceeds on its own schedule and that involves a woman who does not fear birth. Hospital births must include some amount of monitoring, which further disrupts the labor, and standard procedure, which makes it very difficult for women to labor and birth in ways that they choose, that are appropriate for their own unique labor and birth. The art of attending a normal, healthy birth has all but vanished in hospitals. Hospital staff know how to attend medicalized births. They know how to tinker. This is great if you NEED tinkering. If you don't need it, that tinkering can negatively affect the birthing process and result in increased risk to the mother and baby.

While we're discussing risk, why is it that ACOG seldom, if ever, quantifies these risks and compares them to other risky behaviors? If birth is so risky, how does it compare, for instance, to the risk of choking every time you eat a sandwich? Is your child more likely to die due to childbirth complications or due to, say, a bus accident or food poisoning in the school cafeteria? Tossing around the R word without any honest information about the *actual* risks and their relative liklihood of occurring is nothing short of fearmongering. Insinuating that women who birth in their homes are irresponsibly putting their babies in harm's way is rather like demonizing parents for driving to the grocery store with their tot in the back seat. Let's get a sense of perspective, folks.

I'm tired of women being told that birth is dangerous and that they need help. I'm sick to death of women thinking that they can't give birth on their own power, into their own hands. When I mentioned to a friend that I labored Alexander down with each contraction rather than doing the forceful guided pushing we generally see in media portrayals of birth, her response was, "uterine contractions WORK?!?!" How awful that women have been convinced that their own bodies cannot give birth, that they need a physicial to coach and tinker and extract. It is wonderful that we have the technology to save lives when they are truly in danger, and people trained to use that technology. It is horrible that women have been told that they are weak and that they need that technology to be right next to them every step of the way.

Homebirth is no fad. Homebirth is the choice of educated women who understand that life is risky, but who put those risks in their proper prospective and also know that the risks to them and their baby may be GREATER if they take their healthy birth to a hospital. There are tragic things that *can* happen during a normal birth. But there are many, many more disruptions to labor and birth that absolutely DO happen in nearly every hospital birth. These disruptions can and do result in reduced quality of life for the mother and baby, often including unnecessary injury and/or disability to either, and frequently resulting in the "necessity" for further interventions, each of which comes with yet more risks.

The
main goal should be a healthy and safe outcome for both mother and
baby. Choosing to deliver a baby at home, however, is to place the
process of giving birth over the goal of having a healthy baby.

It is sad that ACOG does not realize that this IS the main goal of women who choose homebirth. The process of giving birth is not just a touchy-feely kumbaya bonus experience that selfish women are trying to obtain. The rewarding birth women are seeking IS a healthy birth for their baby - what makes it rewarding is knowing that you gave your child the absolute best, HEALTHIEST start at life that you possibly could. A birth that starts on the baby's timetable, that includes a calm mother in her own environment, that involves a minimum of poking and prodding, that supports coping without medication, and that permits the mother to gently ease her baby out in physiologically appropriate positions IS a healthy birth for the majority of babies and mothers. It is ALSO empowering for the mother and it is absolutely not selfish for women to want that empowerment. It is utterly misogynistic to tell women that their desire for autonomy is selfish and jeopardizes their child's health. It is absolutely appropriate for a woman to have power in her own birth. She is, after all, the child's mother, the woman who is pregnant, and the person who has to do the work of labor and birth.

Shame on ACOG for their closed-mindedness and lack of perspective on normal birth. Shame on them for their misrepresentation of "risk" and "safety" and using fear to control women. Shame on them for their misogyny. The default should always be to withhold medicine unless a person is sick, and not to operate unless a person requires surgery. For ACOG to sling around "risk" without backing it with data is irresponsible. For ACOG to demonize women for upholding the value that they themselves swore to - to "first do no harm" - is wrong, and should not be tolerated.

It is time for ACOG to give their practices a long, hard look. Homebirth advocates welcome discourse regarding maternity care and hope to see it change. We do not wish to abolish hospital birth, merely make it safer for all women and babies, while providing non-medical birth options to women who understand their value. When ACOG is ready to stop accusing women of being selfish, celebrity-obsessed bimbos, we're ready to listen. Until then, keep those OBs far, far away from me.

December 02, 2007

Alexander "Xander" Lucien Hardy
born at home in the water
7:05 PM Sunday, December 2, 2007
7 lbs, 3 oz; 20"

Xander was gently born (no forceful pushing!) after a quick and efficient 2-hour labor. Excited big brother Griffin attended his birth and gave Jess a thumbs-up afterward. He later said he didn't want to go to bed because "I can't take my eyes off the baby." We enjoyed lots of quiet bonding time together and loved how Xan recognized Griffin's and Dan's voices and gave his mom and dad a content smile. Reese was eager to meet his new baby brother and greeted him with a kiss.

November 22, 2007

"Due dates" are not expiration dates, they're estimates. Those estimates are based on averages. A mere 5% of babies are born on their estimated date of birth. The rest, well, are not. If left alone by impatient parents and caregivers, they arrive in roughly equal numbers over the weeks before and after the "due date".

What's more, each woman is unique. Some women tend to gestate for 38 weeks. Some have bodies that prefer to take 43 weeks to grow a new person. Each baby pregnancy is unique. First babies tend to arrive a little later than subsequent babies - with an average gestation of 41.5 weeks, not 40 weeks - but every baby is different. One might be ready to be born at 37 weeks. Another might not give the signal for labor to start until 42 weeks.

Ina May Gaskin puts it this way: "There isn't enough good research to prove a basic assumption that underlies all the rules, regulatons, and courtroom judgments about how long a pregnancy should be - that there is a specific week of pregnancy that is the best time for all women to give birth. We women aren't exactly calibrated to one another."

So, to that end, I'd appreciate it if people would stop referring to me, at 40 weeks and 2 days, as "overdue". I'm not overdue. The baby doesn't get docked a letter grade a day, his utilities don't get turned off. I've been saying all along that my baby will probably make his debut in late November. That is still true. Until his birthday, he's hanging out in an ideal starting position, left occiput anterior (LOA), head tucked, body curled and ready to go.

To borrow a phrase from my yoga instructors and midwife, I am currently in the middle of my "due time" - a stretch of roughly five weeks during which my baby will arrive. No, I'm not "late". Yes, I'm "still pregnant" and will continue to be so until the baby and my body conspire together to get active labor started, which will happen...whenever it happens. No, I'm not trying to jump-start things, which would only make me uncomfortable and exhausted, not a great way to approach birth. No, we're not talking about medical induction, there is no need to evict a baby for no reason other than his leaning toward this side of the average. He's healthy. Want to keep him healthy? Let him choose his own birthdate.

My midwife described me as a "lady in waiting" - a lovely phrase evocative of a peaceful lull before the birth of one's baby. And so I wait, content. If a pregnant mother can do that, certainly the other people in her life can as well!

October 28, 2007

First, a photo from the Oct 9th photo shoot. We're kinda cute. That was three weeks ago, at 34 weeks pregnant.

Today is the "be ready date". I'm, hmmm, mostly ready? If a baby showed up today we'd be fine. By tonight I'll have the actual box of birth stuff organized. The painter doesn't show up until tomorrow, though. No worries, in a week we'll be more settled. My boys tend to show up at 40 weeks on the dot, and I'm pretty sure the littlest Lucia-Hardy will follow suit.

I'm emptying the guest room (soon to be baby's room) and office closets. The rooms are a mess but it's a productive mess. I LOVE reorganizing and purging. So far:

♦ We've donated two boxes of books and my back issues of Mothering Magazine and Bitch to the library.♦ We recycled about 7-8 years' worth of Martha Stewart Living. Oh, I am so relieved to be free of them. They were owning me instead of the other way around.♦ I've got boxes and bags piling up for Goodwill.♦ I finally recycled the notecards on which I recorded guest responses and gifts for our wedding, which happened more than ten years ago. Sometimes the archivist in me needs to LET GO.♦ I've added several formal gowns to my consignment pile. I'm keeping: wedding dress, prom dresses. Everything else? If I haven't worn that dress from Dave's wedding in 1995 a second time, it's never getting worn again. OUT. ♦ Reorganized the vitamins/drugs/etc in the kitchen cabinet. Dan likes the new setup and asked me how we can get me to nest more often. ♦ Christmas shopping is well under way.♦ New office furniture is in the parlor downstairs, waiting for the office painting to be done.♦ The "Baby's Birthday Big Brother Box" of activities should be complete tonight, right down to the ingredients for our favorite killer chocolate birthday cake.♦ Figured out where and when to recycle hazardous materials, like a can of dead batteries, a defunct computer monitor, and one dead CF bulb.

October 25, 2007

I wish I could think of snappy comebacks like this even when I'm *not* pregnant and fuzzy-brained...

Dan was doing rounds at a hospital yesterday and at the nurses' station
on the neuro ward, the nurses were having a party for one of their
coworkers who is transferring to another department. He asked which
department, and it turned out to be L&D. Talking about this
reminded another nurse that I'm pregnant, and she turned to Dan and asked...

nurse: "Where is your wife delivering?"

Dan: "at home"

nurse: "No, really. St. Mary's?"

Dan: "no... we don't live at St. Mary's."

She still doesn't believe him.
I thought his response was just perfect. Why do I never think of things
to say like that? I was still chuckling over it this morning.